Orange Order Double Standards

Recently the Orange Order made a great play of honouring Martin Luther and the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. A major exhibition marking this 500th anniversary was opened at a museum run by the Orange Order in Belfast.

A display entitled Staunch And True at the Museum of Orange Heritage examines the impact and legacy of the event. The Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, Edward Stevenson, said: Our latest major exhibition provides an informative insight into the historical context of the Reformation and how its powerful legacy impacted and inspired future generations.

This the same Orange Order that refuses to discipline members who attend the Romish Mass, which is against the laws of the Orange Order. This has happened in the past when members attended funeral masses and recently when members attended requiem mass for Martin McGuinness.

How many Members, Officers, Lodges and Districts within the Orange Order will say or do anything about this breech of their rules? Virtually none of them! They will turn a blind a blind eye to what has happened. When or where opposition to attending the mass might be raised it sill not receive the necessary support to pursue the matter, which always becomes a convenient excuse for any who are challenged about it. However no one resigns in disgust at the compromise.

This is double standards. They pretend to honour Luther on one hand for his stand for Truth, yet on the other refuse to stand themselves for what is true. 

Luther had his own views on the subject of the Lord's Supper but he was clear on the Romish Mass:
When we have overthrown the Mass, we shall have overthrown the whole Papacy with it. For it is upon the Mass, as upon a rock, that the Papacy rests - with its monasteries, its bishoprics, its colleges, its altars, its ministers, and its doctrines. All these will fall when their sacrilegious and abominable Mass has crumbled into the dust.

We must state in the first place that our intention has never been to abolish divine worship, but merely to purge the form which is used of all additions which have sullied it. I am speaking of that abominable Canon which is a confluence of slimy lagoons; they have made of the mass a sacrifice; they have added to it offertories. The mass is not a sacrifice, it is not the act of a sacrificing high priest. Let us regard it as a sacrament, or a testament. Let us call it a blessing, or eucharist, or Lord's Table, or Lord's Supper, or the memorial of the Lord. Or give it any title we like, provided that it is not sullied by the term sacrifice, or re-enactment. With the Canon we discard all that implies an Oblation, so that we are left with what is pure and Holy.